Huerter knows pressure

MARK McGUIRE Commentary

Published 12:15 am, Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Tom Huerter knows the pressure of sports, the pressure of playing on the national stage, the pressure of running a team with the hopes of its players, families and town riding on it. He also knows the toughest, and perhaps most common, sports pressure of them all.

There is pressure, of course, in bringing a bunch of kids down to Aberdeen, Md., and managing them in an international World Series. Huerter is leading a team of 12-year-olds from Clifton Park later this week to the Cal Ripken World Series. Sixteen teams from around the world, a bunch of kids and their kin looking to him to make the right decisions from the dugout or third-base coach's box.

"The pressure is really, to be honest, off the field," he continued. "You want to prepare the kids (in practice) and be sure they are ready to compete."

The pressure of managing his Knights won't come when the games are webcast on mlb.com or, if Clifton Park makes the later rounds, televised on the MLB Network. Huerter has been on TV before. Lots. No, the pressure of the moment came long before this, weeks and even months ago.

So managing now comes down to simple reminders of all that work -- short to the ball ... back shoulder -- and working the game. All the hard stuff already has been done. You remind yourself and the players of that.

Less well known than the Little League World Series, the Cal Ripken Series is more like traditional baseball. The rubber is 50 feet away (rather than 46 feet away in Little League), base paths are 70 feet, and there's leading. Teams come from as far away as Australia. Yes, it's a big deal.

But it's not the NCAAs. If Huerter's name sounds familiar, that's because he was a key player on Siena's 1989 NCAA basketball team and is now one of the team's broadcasters. Is there more pressure playing high-level hoops or managing a high-level kids' game? Playing, of course. But that had less to do with the stage than with his individual nature.

"The pressure of coaching is not the same as playing," he said. "I put more pressure on myself because I was driven. Nothing came easy for me. The pressure was all internal. I never felt pressure to perform for someone."

But there's another kind of pressure, maybe the worst, one Huerter is all to familiar with as a dad, but one he will be insulated from this weekend: Watching your kid from the stands.

"When you're in the stands watching your kid, you have no control over anything," Huerter said. "That's why you have parents yelling out over every swing."

Huerter said one of the more stressful times he's had in sports was watching his sons Kevin and Thomas play freshman basketball last season.

"The coach in me would like to have some influence, but I knew I couldn't," he said. "I can't call a time out and call a ball screen to get that gorilla off my kid."

So when a parent is acting up or trying to coach from the stands, "I can understand it," he said. "I always had a strict rule with parents: Words of encouragement, not words of direction."

So now his team heads to the Baltimore area for the tournament. They will get to spend time with Ripken himself. "Playing with house money," Huerter told his Knights. No pressure. None at all. Well, except for maybe the moms and dads.